Features

Razeen Sally on himself, his family and people

Published

4 years ago

2022/02/6

My article last Sunday was mostly on the places Razeen Sally wrote about in his wide spectrum, scintillating 2019 book. Titled Return to Sri Lanka – Travels in a Paradoxical Island it is a comment on most things in the island, seen after a lapse of 42 years. He returned solo in 2006-2007, 2008, 2011 and then more continuously, often with his mother. He writes: “On my later visits I wanted to probe, learn, understand. But Sri Lanka pulled me back emotionally too, not just intellectually. The emotional tug was my childhood. I yearned for re-connection and to use it as a lens, a point of comparison, to discover Sri Lanka today, the Sri Lanka I so belatedly started to experience as an adult. And ultimately, I suppose, to discover myself.”

He first dedicates the book to his mother in a page long appreciation ending with: “I owe you everything. Without you this book and much else besides, would not have been possible. This is my first ‘non-academic’ book. It is for you.” A fine start. He then follows with his Introduction and the text divided into two parts: A Sri Lankan Childhood and Sri Lanka through Adult Eyes: A travelogue.

The author

As I mentioned last week, Razeen Sally was born in Colombo in 1965 to a Muslim father – Farouk Sally, and Welsh mother – Pat Kneen. When his father who was GM of Mt Lavinia Hotel was imprisoned by Mrs B’s government in the 1970s for exchange control violation, Razeen and his two brothers were home schooled to avoid being subject to teasing in college. Mother and three sons finally left for England and settled down with Pat’s mother in Wales. Razeen attended the Rhyl High School, later a private school in Wales from where he went to the London School of Economics to earn his first and second degrees, and PhD. Brief visits to Sri Lanka to be with his father ended when his father joined the family in Ryle and died soon after in 2002.

At the start of 2012 he moved to Singapore to teach at the National University. In 2015 the new SL government asked him in as policy advisor. He gladly accepted and in 2018 became adviser to the finance minister after a Cabinet reshuffle. The government changed and so he turned to be a mere visitor but his abiding love for the country increased as he saw more of it, warts and all.

He is sympathetic and unprejudiced and in his book criticisms are mild though justified. He never carps in his comments. He seamlessly and skillfully introduces his opinion on people, events, places, and politics down the years, traces the island’s history from colonial days to 2018, touching on earlier historic reigns. Alongside is an account of his childhood in SL, personal snippets and the functioning of an extended Muslim family. Referring to diversity he writes: “You see that expressed in the way people dress and what they eat, where they go to worship, and the languages: Sinhala and Tamil as well as English. That’s all on the surface.” Implying that in the final analysis, though differences exist and tensions arise, we are all the same, whatever our race or religion.

Unity in diversity was practiced and praised; no more at present. My comment here is that our differences continue to be exacerbated by religious leaders and wily politicians leading the country to unnecessary discord and frequent eruptions of racial and/or religious enmity. A recent example is the moniker ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ being thrown around, smacking of majority race and religion, canceling out secularism and parity.

People in the book

Innumerable – ranging from ancient travelers Ibn Batuta and Horace Walpole, through the ages to now. “My Colombo characters are a kaleidoscope of Sinhala, Tamil, Burgher, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim plus an occasional agnostic and atheist for good measure.”

Political change is touched on. Razeen comments thus: DS Senanayake –”He understood people and had practical sense. DS had a liberal and secular vision for independent Ceylon – a multi ethnic state with strict separation of the state from religion. He had no time for drum beating Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and was sensitive to minorities’ anxieties…. One significant blemish was his treatment of Indian Tamils on tea estates …10% of voting population” Then “the shine began to come off this golden age.” “Sinhala Buddhist nationalism became SWRD’s vehicle to political triumph…. Sinhala Only brought SWRD to power with a crushing electoral victory.” And so on to the JVP, ethnic riots, the LTTE, the civil war and political succession thereafter.

Razeen has read widely and he references or quotes a wide gamut of sources and persons ranging from the Mahavamsa to Robert Knox, Sir Ivor Jennings, Michael Ondaatje, Shehan Karunatillake and many others. He also met a wide cross section of Sri Lankans and I appreciated the very human and humane details he provides. One such couple is Dil and Elmo Jayawarden. “Dil and Elmo are the best matched couple I know and they have the most wholesome family I know. They are a study in contrasts but complement each other. Elmo is exuberant, witty, loquacious with a very Sri Lankan way with words.” Razeen writes in detail about their river house where he often stayed, his mother too; and the Candle Aid project they started. All praise so very deserved since hundreds, nay thousands, mostly students, have benefitted from Candle Aid.

I was delighted to find five pages in the Chapter Rajarata, Land of Kings devoted to Laki Senanayake and his home Diyabubula – “L S is probably Sri Lanka’s most famous living artist. He is a protean and prolific solo creator…” Razeen describes his work and his life among villagers, his employing many and helping them and his independence of spirit. He says that even in the late 1950s Laki went about in a sarong, bare-bodied and turned away from city life in 1970. This writing on Laki Senanayake is apt because the artist died in 2021.

Faraz Shauketaly, a relative who migrated to Wales after he suffered a three pronged attack one night of a strangler, suffocater and gunman during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime of 2009- 2014. He escaped with a minor gunshot injury but returned, intrepid, to continue his investigative journalism for the MTV I Channel. This was info that was new to, at least, me.

He details the civil war, but unlike many born in Sri Lanka or descended, now resident overseas, writing mostly fiction or even fact after perhaps a brief visit and/or second hand info collecting, Razeen visited often and resided here and lived mentally and emotionally, though resident overseas, the conflict and the peace years. He went around Vavuniya and Jaffna and its islands extensively in 2011, 2015 and 2018 with brief visits in between.

He spoke with Christian priests, university students, traders, ordinary people. His writing is first-hand, fact-based and unprejudiced. It is evident he has mulled over what he had seen and discovered, with an academic’s mind. He intended writing it all down, hence his visits had a purpose. He ends the chapter War Scars thus: “The journey back to Colombo was the last and longest road trip for this book. It had been the one with the widest geographical coverage and greatest variety of experience… I saw the pathos of war and its enduring scars and in the East troubling signs of emerging Islamic fundamentalism but also the buoyancy of post-war recovery.”

In the final chapter Envoi, which equates to ‘an author’s concluding words’, Razeen speculates on three scenarios for the future. The first “Drift” is mere proceeding in the same way; the second “Take-off” sees Sri Lanka achieve its potential. The third ‘Relapse” has the country drifting back to autocracy, intolerance and dysfunctional politics. We have, unfortunately, seen in the last months where the country seems to be heading.

However, the book ends on a personally positive and happy note for Razeen. He writes his travels around the country were to discover himself too. He was introduced to meditation and participated in retreats. “I came to find Buddhism’s spiritual core increasingly compelling, the Buddha’s notion of ‘suffering’…..equally significant and joyful… For the first since I was a teenager, Sri Lanka feels more like ‘home’ than anywhere else.”

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Features

US’ anti-migrant stance set to intensify tensions in Western camp

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Migrant boats land on Western beaches. Credit: PA

The announcement by the US authorities of an anti-migrant stance during a recent commemoration in France of the epochal D-Day Landings of June 6, 1944, ought to strike impartial observers as a supreme irony. Whereas what should have been expected was a vibrant celebration of the beginning of the process of Western Europe freeing itself decisively from Nazi or fascist control during the crucial stages of World War Two, this was not to be.

What the world heard instead was a call to contemporary Western Europe to arm itself against a seemingly rising and threatening migrant presence in the region. In other words, the migrant must be despised and ‘shown the door’.

Instead of a commemoration that rejoiced in the flourishing of liberal democracy and its values what one got was a strong affirmation of fascism and racial chauvinism. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vented his spleen against the migrant or foreigner presence in Europe reportedly thus: ‘Sadly today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.’ To ‘beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?’

While at the outbreak of World War Two it was Nazi Germany that was doing the invading and bringing some principal European countries under its suzerainty, this time around we are being given to understand that it’s migrants to the West who are seeking to colonize the latter. It goes without saying that such inflammatory rhetoric would have the deleterious effect of keeping racial tensions alive in the West and jeopardize all possibilities of the countries concerned cementing and maintaining social stability.

The Trump administration gives the impression of taking a leaf from the politically underdeveloped regions of the South to keep the US polity stable and united. In South Asia, for instance, we are not short of ambitious demagogues who use what is referred to as the ‘race card’ to gather unto themselves a following and thereby further their political fortunes. By seeking to stir and sustain anti-migrant hysteria, the Trump administration is also essentially replicating Nazi Germany’s policy of anti-Semitism. That is, fascism is very much alive in the US under President Trump.

Such efforts at churning racial hysteria at this juncture in the US should not come as a surprise. For all intents and purposes, the Trump administration is nowhere near achieving its aims in West Asia, for instance, in the short term. It has failed to bring Iran down to its knees, as it hoped to do, but is adopting the expedient of keeping the world guessing and confused on what it is doing in the region, since it cannot withdraw from the theatre in a hurry without losing face.

While perhaps working out an escape strategy the Trump administration it seems, is hoping to maintain its following at home intact and silent by playing on their racial biases and insecurities. Hence, the anti-foreigner campaign.

Simultaneously, the Trump administration will need to keep a close eye on how economic pressures on the domestic front are panning out. Anti-administration sentiments first break to the surface at meal tables. On this score, the news cannot be good because the average US family’s spending power ought to be shrinking on account of rising energy and oil prices. Consequently, it would not be a bad idea to keep the attention of the US consumer diverted by adeptly playing ‘the race card’; once again, lessons from intellectually bankrupt Southern politicians are coming in handy.

To be sure such comparisons many politicians in vibrantly democratic countries would find quite unflattering. But the stark truth is that racism cannot be tolerated in civilized societies and those politicians who resort to it risk being branded as racists of the first degree. In fact they could be seen as being on par with the likes of German dictator Adolph Hitler and his close collaborators.

However, on the question of migrant policy the Trump administration would likely be at polar opposites with the most vibrant of liberal democracies of the West. This will be the case with the UK, France and Italy for instance. The latter continue to keep their doors open to legal migrants and they are likely to view a virtual blanket ban on migrants as reprehensible.

Moreover, in the foremost democracies of the West debates are vibrantly ongoing on the need to keep racism or any hint of it completely outlawed in the public plane. There is the case of the UK, for instance, where the authorities continue to emphatically pinpoint their adherence to the principle of anti-racism in the conduct of public affairs.

One proof of the above was the parliamentary debate relating to the killing of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton. Police handling of the victim came in for sharp scrutiny by particularly the opposition in the House of Commons but there seemed to be a consensus over the main political divide that the matter should not be politicized.

Moreover, the UK authorities stressed in the House the government’s strict adherence to the policy of non-racism. It was also pointed out that British institutions set up to manage racism at the national, county and neighbourhood levels, for example, were very much intact. In fact, Sri Lanka could gain considerably by studying and implementing locally, legislation modeled on the relevant UK laws if it is in earnest when it speaks of ‘reconciliation’.

Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that Western Europe would ‘cave in’, so to speak, to US pressure on issues related to migration. The liberal democracies of Western Europe in particular would remain for the foreseeable future migrant-welcoming, multi-ethnic and plural democracies.

Nor is it likely that Western Europe would be passively receptive to US demands that it drastically increases its defense spending to meet the latter’s aims. Within the Western fold the EU is remaining committed to backing Ukraine, for instance, in its ongoing armed resistance to the Russian invasion and it is not giving any indication of being deferent to US pressure.

However, although tensions would continue to bristle within US-Western Europe relations on the above and numerous other matters of contention it would be far too premature to announce a parting of company between the two sections of the West. In that sense, the post-World War Two order remains essentially intact. There are still many things in common between the two, particular on the economic plane, that will ensure the continuance of the partnership.

Features

A decade among Yala’s ghosts of gold

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

YM75 "James" surveys his territory from a tree-top vantage point, demonstrating the leopard's commanding presence in the landscape.

The first rays of dawn creep over the ancient rocks of Yala. The Indian Ocean glimmers in the distance, and the wilderness slowly awakens. Somewhere amid the scrub jungle, a pair of amber eyes scans the landscape.

For wildlife conservationist and leopard researcher Milinda Wattegedara, moments such as these have defined more than a decade of dedication to one of Sri Lanka’s most iconic creatures—the Sri Lankan leopard.

What began as fascination evolved into a remarkable conservation journey that has transformed the understanding of Yala’s leopard population and placed Sri Lanka firmly on the global wildlife research map.

“Long before I ever lifted a camera, leopards had already captured my imagination,” says Wattegedara. “What fascinated me was not merely their beauty but the complexity of their lives—their hunting strategies, movements, reproductive behaviour and their remarkable ability to adapt to changing environments.”

That fascination led to the birth of the Yala Leopard Diary in 2013, an ambitious long-term project dedicated to documenting individual leopards and unraveling the mysteries surrounding their lives.

For many visitors, a leopard sighting is a fleeting thrill. For Wattegedara and his team, every encounter is a chapter in an ongoing scientific story.

“Each photograph was never the end of an encounter,” he explains. “It was the beginning of deeper questions. How did a particular leopard use the landscape? How did its behaviour change with the seasons? What environmental pressures shaped its decisions?”

These questions drove years of meticulous fieldwork. Every sighting was carefully recorded with details including location, habitat, behaviour, date and time. Photographs were analysed to identify individual animals through unique spot patterns, allowing researchers to distinguish one leopard from another with remarkable accuracy.

What followed was groundbreaking.

YF77 “Shelly” pauses in quiet observation, embodying the alertness
and grace that define Yala’s leopard population.

From 2013 to 2026, the Yala Leopard Diary identified an astonishing 189 individual leopards within the Yala Block 1. The research revealed a leopard density of approximately 0.524 leopards per square kilometre, making Yala one of the highest leopard-density landscapes ever recorded anywhere in the world.

Such findings have elevated Yala’s status among global wildlife researchers.

Nestled between the Indian Ocean and a mosaic of habitats, ranging from rocky outcrops to dense scrub forests, Yala offers an ecological stage unlike any other.

Here, leopards are photographed silhouetted against ocean horizons, perched atop ancient granite formations, resting on tree branches and stalking prey across sunlit grasslands.

The images tell stories of extraordinary lives.

There is Haminee, a devoted mother navigating the challenges of raising cubs in a competitive landscape. There is Lucas, one of Yala’s most frequently documented males, striding confidently across the Gonalabba Plains with the vast ocean forming an unforgettable backdrop.

There is Ruki demonstrating the species’ incredible strength by hoisting prey onto branches, and Shelly, quietly surveying her surroundings in a moment of feline vigilance.

Together, these individuals have become familiar characters in a living wilderness drama.

YM31 “Ruki” secures prey on a branch, illustrating the remarkable strength and coordination of the Sri Lankan leopard.

Recognising the immense value of long-term documentation, Wattegedara joined forces with fellow researchers Dushyantha Silva, Raveendra Siriwardana and Mevan Piyasena to establish the Yala Leopard Centre in 2020.

Located at the Palatupana entrance to the Yala National Park, the centre is believed to be the world’s first information facility dedicated exclusively to leopards.

“The centre serves as a repository of knowledge, accumulated through years of observation and research,” Wattegedara says. “Our goal is to connect visitors with the science behind conservation and foster a deeper appreciation of these magnificent animals.”

The project’s impact extends far beyond Sri Lanka’s borders.

Research arising from the Yala Leopard Diary has been published in internationally recognised scientific journals. One study introduced an innovative framework for identifying individual leopards, while another documented an extraordinary and previously unrecorded case of a leopard cub being consecutively adopted by two different adult females—first a relative and later an unrelated leopardess.

The discovery attracted international scientific attention and highlighted the complexity of leopard social behaviour.

Yet for Wattegedara, the most important lesson remains one of humility.

“One conclusion has become increasingly clear,” he reflects. “Our understanding of these leopards remains far from complete. We are only beginning to understand how they live, adapt and persist in one of Sri Lanka’s most dynamic protected landscapes.”

YF15 “Hope” descends Rukvila Rock at dawn, showcasing the agility and adaptability of Yala’s leopards.

His words underscore an essential conservation truth: the more we learn about nature, the more mysteries emerge.

As Sri Lanka navigates growing environmental challenges, the Yala Leopard Diary stands as a shining example of what sustained observation, scientific curiosity and public engagement can achieve.

Beyond the stunning photographs and remarkable sightings lies something even more valuable—a growing body of knowledge capable of informing future conservation decisions and ensuring that future generations inherit a wilderness where leopards continue to roam free.

For more than a decade, Wattegedara and his colleagues have followed the tracks of Yala’s elusive predators through dust, rain and scorching heat.

Their work has revealed that every leopard has a story, every sighting has significance and every photograph can contribute to conservation.

And perhaps, most importantly, it has reminded us that the golden ghosts of Yala still have many secrets left to share.

By Ifham Nizam

Features

Glamour, music and community spirit …

Published

11 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sri Lankans are quite active, all around the globe.

News has just come my way, from Glasgow, in Scotland, where the glamour of masks, music, dancing, and community spirit, came together, in spectacular fashion, at Masquerade Night, bringing together members of the Sri Lankan community for an evening filled with music, fashion, food and entertainment.

Organised by Mahesh Balaaratchi (DJ Mowgli) together with Sulochana Asmone, Hiroshini, Prasad, Ashi, and Shawn, the evening provided guests with an opportunity to socialise, enjoy live entertainment, and celebrate in a unique and elegant setting.

Guests arrived from 6:00 pm, dressed in formal attire and decorative masks, creating a colourful and vibrant atmosphere throughout the venue.

DJ Mowgli: The main
organiser of
Masquerade Night

There was a delicious selection of Sri Lankan cuisine and street food, which proved popular throughout the evening.

The buffet offered a variety of traditional favourites, giving attendees a taste of home while adding to the festive atmosphere.

Entertainment was provided by DJ Mowgli, whose performance kept the audience engaged throughout the night. His playlist featured a mixture of popular favourites, dance classics, and cultural music, remixed for a younger generation.

One of the highlights of the evening was the Baila session, which brought a distinctly Sri Lankan flavour to the event.

The Baila segment highlighted the importance of preserving and celebrating cultural traditions, while bringing people together through music and dance.

As familiar rhythms filled the room, guests enthusiastically took to the dance floor, creating one of the most memorable moments of the night.

The crowd was described as lively, energetic, and welcoming, with attendees embracing the spirit of the masquerade theme while enjoying the opportunity to reconnect with friends and meet new people. The family-friendly atmosphere ensured that guests of all ages could take part in the celebrations.